seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes:
> So, I'm pretty convinced at this point that the killer is that the
> motherboards I can come up with (ASUS P2L-97, Tyan Thunder 2, both 440LX)
> are having serious ISA mapping problems.

>>  That's probably the case.  you might try other cards, to verify that
>>  they work.  but i'll note that e.g. on my machines that i mentioned
>>  earlier, i was completely unable to find more than 32KB in one
>>  contiguous area that could reliably be used for PCMCIA memory.


> So, it occurs to me:  Does anyone use *CardBus* adapters?  My cardbus
> laptop is working beatifully with the ray0 card.  A PCI<->CardBus adapter
> would probably work for me.  *sigh*.

>>  I've only seen mention of a couple of these on the web, and invariably
>>  they've all been back-accessable, so they've not been interestnig to
>>  me.  8-)

I did a little bit of research here, I recently purchased a pair of WaveLAN
cards for home and wanted to use one in my NetBSD gateway as a
router/bridge. Since my Only ISA slots were taken I needed a PCI to PCMCIA
bridge. I origanly purchased the LUCENT card wich turned out to be a
SCMMICRO SwapBOX. according to Lucent this card only works on PC99 and PCI
2.2 compliant motherboards, and aperantly my motherboard is nether since I
could not get it to work (SCM does claim that it would work but was not
willing to assist in making that happen) so I went with Lucents stance and
started looking and this is what I found.

PART		MANUFACTURER				FRONT LOAD	READ LOAD	CARDBUS	PCMCIA	SLOTS
PCD-RP-220	www.carry.com.tw				X						X		2
PCD-RC-202	www.carry.com.tw						X		X		X		2
P111		www.elan-digital-systems.co.uk			X		X		X		1
P118		www.elan-digital-systems.co.uk	X						X		2
LUCENTOEM	www.scmmicro.com						X		X		X		1
SWAPBOX?	www.scmmicro.com				X				X		X		2
SWAPBOX?	www.scmmicro.com				 		X		X		X		2
PC750		www.actiontec.com						X				X		2

The carry devices and the elan devices share core technology that elan
licences out, aperantly it has something to do with shared IRQs. They both
internaly do testing with RAY devices and ATA devices all of which work
successfully. The ActionTEC doesnt work with CardBus devices, so I didnt
realy even consider it, but I have heard several sorries of peopl purchasing
this and not being able to get it to work. The SwapBox devices from SCM
Micro were honestly just two expensive for me to look into $300each
compaired to the ~$70 prices for the others, I also have had some strange
problems in the past with them and Forteza cards so I didn't get a chance to
try them out. In the end I ordered the PCD-RC-202, it was the best price for
the feature set I wanted and I am sure it will work for my needs (I have not
received it yet, although I should any day now).

> For that matter, anyone know if USB<->CardBus readers are supported in
> -current?  :)  I know it sounds insane, but it's cheaper than the
> PCI<->CardBus adapter I've seen.
No there not, maybe through umas if you can get USB to work (which I cant)
but I have only seen USB-PCMCIA devices presented as storage devices for
digital cameras not for full PCMCIA/CARDBUS.

>> I've never seen a CardBus adapter that sits on USB.  I've seen some
>> pcmcia storage / cf / smart media adapters, which might work with
>> umass, but the one that i didn't present a reasonable device class
>> value.  (it was the siig.  *sigh*)

Yup...

> I don't suppose there's an easy way to debug problems with getting access
> to 64k of ISA memory on a system that *really* doesn't seem to be able to
> allocate it?

>> This is the joy of ISA.  It'll be good when ISA is dead.